Young and Lingard goals leave Lukaku in shade
Jose Mourinho has come up with some excuses in his time but explaining Romelu Lukaku’s lack of goals by revealing that his £75million striker no longer has his own boot endorsement might be the most glorious diversion ever dreamed up by football’s most Machiavellian mind.
It was already a strange night’s football by the time that Mourinho came in post-match to analyse a game in which his team had taken a three-goal lead within 31 minutes only almost to throw it all away in the second half when Watford claimed two of their own.
This briefly looked like the worst nightmare for a manager whose speciality was once that his teams knew how to shut the door as well as any other, and it took Jesse Lingard to score a brilliant fourth to seal it. In the meantime, United had missed chance after chance, an “open goal” as Mourinho said for Lingard and two good opportunities for Lukaku, who was playing in what might only be described as felt-tip Nikes, with the swoosh scribbled out.
The outstanding performer had been Ashley Young, back at his first club, scoring two first-half goals including a remarkable free-kick for the second, which his manager greeted on the bench with a theatrical expression of disbelief.
One minute before substitute Troy Deeney scored the first of Watford’s two goals from the penalty spot, Lukaku missed badly, hesitating over his chance and allowing defenders back in between him and the goal. “I think he [Lukaku] needs a big contract with boots because at this moment he doesn’t have a contract with any brand, that’s why he’s playing with black boots,” Mourinho said. “He finished his deal and
now he is waiting for the right offer and he is playing in black boots.
“I think he needs a brand to give him the right boots and to pay him the right money so he goes back to goals. But jokes apart, he works amazingly well. Amazing player, amazing professional, great condition, great colleague. I couldn’t be happier with him.”
The United manager said that Nemanja Matic, substituted in the second half, has a “muscular” injury which the club do not yet know the extent of, and it was notable that their problems began when the Serb had left the pitch.
Watford’s 77th-minute penalty was won by another substitute, Roberto Pereyra, and Watford manager Marco Silva pointed out that it came from a foul by Marcos Rojo, who was on a booking. “It was a second yellow card for Rojo,” Silva said, “With 11 against 10 it would have been really difficult for them.”
There were six of the regulation 90 minutes left when Abdoulaye Doucoure scored a second for Watford from the cross of another substitute, Andre Carillo.
In the end, Lingard’s decisive winner was one of the greatest goals he will ever score, running from his own half against a back-pedalling Watford defence, zagging through them as he looked for the angle and the range to beat Heurelho Gomes.
The Englishman finished beautifully with his right foot, having moved to the right in the past few paces and picked his spot.
“These teams in mid-table have quality and no pressure,” Mourinho said afterwards. “They don’t feel the pressure teams with other objectives have. They came with everything, they have no problems. They believed with the second goal it would be possible. They gave us a couple of minutes of real pressure, but this is football.”
Spoken like a man who really does struggle to feel empathy with other managers. For a while this just seemed like one of those United victories from the days in which they ruled English football: when the opposition were reduced to a pile of rubble by half-time and you could hear a crisp packet blowing across the home end. Against one of the most upwardly mobile teams in the Premier League, Young scored two in 23 minutes. When Anthony Martial picked off Watford with the third it looked like the home team had embarked with no plan at all, but in the second half they resisted the rout and came back with some goals of their own. “We had chances for 4-0, 5-0, 6-0,” Mourinho said. “We had that in the first half. We finished the first half with a chance from an